What's Your Emotional Eating Quotient?

Why your EEQ makes you overeat  and how to stop it so you can lose weight

Did you buy six boxes of Girl Scout cookies this year because you couldn't say no to the world's cutest 7-year-old in a Brownie uniform? Did you take that extra helping of your sister-in-law's whole wheat carob cake because you didn't want to hurt her feelings? When your BFF is waffling over ordering dessert, do you agree to share it with her even though you don't want it  and then match her bite for bite?

If you could answer yes to any of these questions, you may suffer from sociotropy  the scientific term for having the need to please others. While that might make you the right candidate to broker peace in the Mideast, excessive niceness is a recipe for excessive girth. And it's only one of the character traits that can lead to unhappy mornings on the scale.

We all know the major triggers of emotional eating: anger, loneliness, rejection, guilt. Most of us, at one time or another, have taken out our fury on a bag of crunchy corn chips or tried to beat the blues with a pint of cookie-dough ice cream. But new research shows that certain personality types are also prone to making a frosted donut a chosen alternative to therapy. Besides the sociotrope, there's the thrill seeker and the worka-choco-holic  and each type needs different strategies for coping without the extra calories.

The People Pleaser: You Eat for One, But It's Not You

In a recent experiment at Case Western Reserve University, researchers screened volunteers for their "gotta be nice" qualities, then invited them to a meeting with a staff member (actually an actor) who casually passed around a bowl of M&M's. When the bowl came their way, students who'd scored higher on the sociotropy scale dug in, taking more than the students who were less concerned with others' comfort or with matching how many the actor ate. "They didn't want him to feel bad by eating fewer," explains study head Julie Exline, Ph.D.

We often eat more when we're around those who are eating a lot  that's one reason studies show that people whose friends are overweight are more likely to be heavy themselves. "Then, if you have a people-pleasing thing going on top of that, you'll feel even more pressured to follow others," says Exline.

After overeating comes depression, and not just because you can't zip your jeans. "When your motivation is to please other people, you're letting them tell you what's important to you," says Exline. "I describe it as 'silencing your own voice.' " The goal, then, to avoid piling on those unpleasing pounds, is to find that voice.

1. First, Consider What You Want
If you're not truly hungry, "Lay on praise, then state your boundary," suggests Karen R. Koenig, a psychotherapist and author of Nice Girls Finish Fat. You might say, "Those pastries look delicious, but I'm so stuffed from lunch that I'm going to take a pass." You can smile at that cute Brownie, give her the money for two boxes of cookies, then ask her to donate them to troops overseas. (Yes, they can do that  see hugsforsoldiers.org).

2. De-nice Yourself...A Little
Of course, you're going to be fighting an enemy that has outposts in your head, as writer Sally Kempton famously said. Even if you were the biggest tomboy on the block, you probably grew up believing that caretaking was in your future, if not somewhere in your genes. "But changing isn't as hard as you may think," says Koenig. "It's really about learning a new life skill."

Practice saying a (polite) no to the salesperson on the phone (start with the robocaller if you're a tough case), then work your way up to strangers offering samples in a store and coworkers tempting you with holiday goodies. After that, you'll be ready to take on your cousin when she pushes a second helping of pie at you.

Good Housekeeping already has an account with this email address. Link your account to use Facebook to sign in to Good Housekeeping. To insure we protect your account, please fill in your password below.

Your information has been saved and an account has been created for you giving you full access to everything goodhousekeeping.com and Hearst Digital Media Network have to offer. To change your username and/or password or complete your profile, click here.